


Amerika

by lichtkleid



Category: Emigrate (Band), Rammstein
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 11:37:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6802126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lichtkleid/pseuds/lichtkleid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Till Lindemann ponders alone in New York.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Amerika

The city looks like a volcano and it sounds like an ocean. The roads seem made out of flowing lava, glowing from the cars’ lights, breaking the crust of the black buildings. And the sky, the sky is so dark, so black, above this fire. No planes, they’re all hidden in this darkness that engulfs everything. No birds, they must hide within Central Park’s green insides.  
I stand on the edge of the Rockefeller Center, like a gargoyle of the modern times, and my gaze dives deep into the city’s glowing entrails. I feel alone up there, yet they are many to roam around me; from tourists in summer clothes and photographers with huge cameras to couples seeking out romanticism on the roofs.  
A girl asks me to take a picture of her and her friend; I take her phone and they turn their backs to the view, grinning at me. I take the picture. Then they kiss, and it’s so brief that I barely register it, yet my finger has pressed on the screen again and their peck is caught on camera.  
I smile, they wave, and we part.  
Maybe years later this picture will be the dearest memory of their time together.

My steps are heavy when I take the lift, then they get even heavier as I hit the pavement. It’s warm beneath my feet. New York’s heat is smothering, stifling, even in the dead of night. It hangs low and heavy on my shoulders, wants to chase the air of out my lungs, to make me crawl, seeking for shade and mist. And between the blocks and the parks, between the grey and the green, which place is left for humans like us?  
The yellow sign of a McDonald’s catches my eye as I walk down the avenue. Some teenagers are sitting on the pavement underneath it, biting happily in their sandwiches. Their laugh is loud, contagious, and powerful. One of the girls looks up, meets my eye then turn back to the man in front of her. They laugh, and I remember that here, no one knows me.  
It feels strange, like a relief, a disappointing relief, to think that I can walk down the streets without fearing to be recognized.  
Then again everything’s strange here; everything’s different in this city that seems to have been built for giants. It’s in nothing alike to the European cities I know and cherish, but what treasures must it hold within, treasures that can only by seen by those who have proved worthy of them. After all, Richard left me for the warm soil of New York, for the glow of a promise, for the shimmer of his childhood dream. And what I gave him with our band was nothing but smoke compared to the open arms of New York City and the call of the American Dream. 

I cross the street and there’s another man standing on the other side. His hair is spiked; all my blood rushes to my heart, but he’s not Richard, he’s just another man in a city much too big for men, and he’s already behind me. 

I’m waiting for the last train to my hotel, in Williamsburg, when it starts to rain. Water falls down violently, hammering on the pavement, gliding inside my shirt, sticking my hair to my forehead, and when I finally muster the courage to walk underneath the penthouse, I’m dripping wet. The rain blurs the streetlamp’s light. A train arrives and doesn’t stop. Its lit windows break down the night with their clarity, and the silence also when the wheels crush the rails. I realize briefly that dozens of lives are intertwined inside it, complex and rich lives, with friend and foe, and love and hatred, it makes my spine shiver and then the train’s gone already. The wind and the droplets of rain whip my face coldly, but it feels relieving after the heavy heat of the day. Tiredness climbs inside my calves.  
A yellow light shines in the corner of my eye, I turn my head and my train stops. I blink, climb in, let myself fall in a seat, and I wait to come home.  
Weirdly enough I’m feeling cold as I walk inside my motel’s room. The temperature hasn’t lowered though. At least, I think so: the thermometer shows 75 degrees still, but I never bothered to learn the calculation for the equivalence to Fahrenheit measure. I turn off the air conditioner and slip between my sheets, my gaze sticking into the ceiling as if I hoped for redemption to fall down from there. It doesn’t, and I lie down dreaming, not quite sleeping but barely conscious. I dream of my dreams, of my trials, of my pains, my chaos, my indecisions. I dream of my joys, of my love, of my success, of my muse, I dream of Richard.  
He uses such simple words. Why would he do otherwise? His words are tender. They feel pure. They feel like droplets of rain on a body in flames. Soft, gentle words that pierce my heart as a thousand needles. 

The night passes by feverishly. I long for the Baltic Sea, for its silence, and for the cold and crispy air of my hometown. When I close my eyes, I hope for the salty stroke of the wind on my cheeks, but they’re met with nothing but the hot atmosphere of the room. My neighbors are playing some jazz, a languorous melody in which a woman sings with a deep, soulful voice, and inside her voice I feel as if I could see all of Louisiana. It pierces through the thin wall. I’m too warm again, no air wants to fill my lungs. Here it’s like in the bayou, the shadows of the furniture and my scattered clothes have the scary appearance of the mangrove.

The scrambled eggs taste of ash in my mouth. I chew sand and drown it in bitter coffee. Little crystals of sugar dance inside it before slowly dissipating in the black cloud. Then a woman asks if I’m finished and she takes back my plate. She’s astoundingly beautiful, the body of a queen underneath the rags of a waitress. For a second I long to see this body. Gold rings circle her fingers, and their brightness makes her black skin smooth and glowing. I turn back and flash a smile; suddenly grasped by a craving – sheer "Drang". She smiles back, and her full lips stretch over white teeth. But her eyes remain full of a dark mystery. She walks away with a subtle roll of the hips that hypnotizes me, but as the distance between us grows, all my attraction to her vanishes. My smile turns bitter. Funny how it is, now that Richard’s out of the picture, I am, for the first time, entirely true and faithful to him.  


I always spent my life knowing that everything and everyone is temporary. Anyone you have by your side at some point will be another in a certain span of time. Death occurs, illness occurs, estrangement occurs; I always thought there was no point in denying them.  
It doesn’t make it hurt less in the meantime.  
Beneath me the Atlantic Ocean opens its wide, liquid lap. I feel small and alone, once again shrunken down to the size of a mouse, and it doesn’t feel as displeasing as it once did. The light reflects sharply into the water, it glimmers and burns my retina. Passers-by are brushing against me, they make a living mass, mumbling and walking. A bike almost rakes my side.  
Why the fuck couldn’t I bring him more than this city has to offer? Was he longing for a dream, for the ocean, for the fucking rooftops?  
Or was he wishing for oblivion?  
We were just a tool to him, a mere mean to achieve his goal.  
He’s all around here. Posters on the walls, screens on Times Squares, advertising and lights are all about him. Emigrate soared so high I couldn’t even imagine it. Too bad it had to crush us underneath the weight of its ambition.

The beautiful woman isn’t there when I come back to the hotel, so I simply go back to my room. I write. Words come easy with the pain, and soon I will publish another book of poetry. But it’s not worth it, I think as a quiet desperation spread its tendrils inside my lungs. I will never write something beautiful enough to counterpart the pain in me right now.  
This I know.

Later that night, in New York’s hot night, I hurry to the Madison Square Garden. I may arrive a little late, but I don’t want to be in the front rows anyway. All I want is to steal a glance, to gorge myself on sights that should have been mine and to simply know what could have been.

There is an explosion of light. The place is crowded. Huge, full of men and women of all ages and all types. Expectancy fills up the air.  
The bandmembers appear on stage. The light shines hard on them. They step towards us. They look stern, they look grand, they look good. Gods looking down upon the mortals They created.  
And then. Something falls within me as Richard finally arrives. His guitar strapped to his body. He raises his arms, demanding.  
He stands.  
The crowd burst out in applause. I don’t, pettily, as if my non-compliance would change anything.  
When the silence falls down at least, the tiniest of smiles breaks Richard’s face.  
The music begins and my mind is sent to swirl into a bottomless pit of lust and anger.

 

The woman of the hotel sits on my bed. Her golden rings shine bright. She smirks and asks how my evening was. I think back at him, proud and tall underneath the lights and the shower of sparkles, remember that this was once my place, and crush my lips to hers. They taste of wine and revenge. I will have her, even though she won't ward off the pain. 

But life will go on, and so will I, rushed away on its impatient wings.


End file.
